Henning Mankell (1948–2015)

Eine magische Aura umweht den afrikanischen Straßenjungen Nelio: Noch nie hat jemand gewagt, ihn zu verprügeln. Vielleicht weil aus dem 10-Jährigen, dem sich die irdischen Abgründe viel zu früh erschlossen haben, eine greise Weisheit spricht. Jetzt aber liegt Nelio mit schweren Schusswunden auf dem Dach eines ärmlichen Theaters. Dort erzählt er -- zwischen kräftezehrenden Fieberschüben -- dem Bäckerjungen José Antonio Maria Vaz sein Leben. Das beginnt mit der Erinnerung an die show more Banditen, die sein Dorf niederbrannten, seine Schwester töteten und vor denen er geflüchtet ist, als sie ihn zwingen wollten, einen Verwandten zu erschießen. Und es endet bei den Straßenkindern in der Stadt, denen Nelio zu einem an Fairness und Reife geradezu übermenschlichen Anführer wurde: Gestohlen jedenfalls wird nicht unter seinem Regime; bestenfalls -- in der Villa eines verreisten Entwicklungshelfers -- der Kühlschrank leer gegessen. show less

I'd already come across Kurt Wallander thanks to the excellent Kenneth Branagh series, but this is the first time I've picked up one of the original novels. Happily, I liked it so much that I'm all ready to go on a rampage and buy the rest of the books AND the two television series. I love it when that happens!

The novel opens with the discovery of a horrific murder in the isolated farming community of Lunnarp. Called in by a terrified neighbour, Inspector Wallander arrives to find a show more mutilated and bloodied old man dead in his farmhouse bedroom. His wife is alive, but only barely, with a noose cruelly knotted around her neck. Armed with a host of confusing clues, uneasy hunches and the word 'foreign', repeated by the old woman on her deathbed, Wallander and his team must pull out all the stops to find the killers before the media storm around the case sparks a national wave of racial hate crime.

I found the whole novel absolutely fascinating, and it was a great brain work-out. I couldn't stop mulling over everything that had happened so far, and every time I put the book down I was itching to get back to it again! I think it helps that the reader is basically inside Kurt Wallander's mind from start to finish, even though it's written in the third person. He's a thoughtful, clever, kind and immensely human character, with a fierce sense of justice and a touch of quiet vulnerability - the kind of cop every reader will be rooting for! I also liked that this was very much a procedural novel, rather than a forensic gorefest, and the way the Swedish setting really came to life on the page. Mr Mankell - you have another new convert! Highly recommended. show less

I enjoyed (if that's the word for it) re-entering Wallander's world (Wallander finds it a little difficult to enjoy life) after a long time away. However, I was surprised by how clunky or amateurish some of the sentences sounded (e.g. "They just had to find the guy Jan Kleyn had hired to kill Nelson Mandela."), but couldn't tell if that was Mankell or the translation. Look forward to reading the next (which has a different translator) to see if I notice the same. That said, there was much to show more like about this book and much that was disturbingly relevant. For instance, replace "South Africa" with "the United States" in the following:
Maybe they haven't really understood deep down that the future of South Africa will force them to reassess everything they've been used to. Many of them will never manage that. They would rather see the country destroyed in an explosion of blood and fire. But they will not succeed.
May it be so. show less

Wallander is investigating the suicide of a girl when a serial killer starts his gruesome series of murders in Skåne. The killer seems to target wealthy men. Wallander and his team work around the clock, but it is hard to find out anything and the case is utterly complicated.

This novel kept me turning the pages from beginning to end. There was not even one chapter that did not keep my interest. The characterization of Wallander, his team mates and the other people involved in the case, the show more intricate weaving of the story, the descriptions of the settings and Mankell's prose - all this is top notch.

The German translation is stellar and never clumsy or artificial. The atmosphere that is created through the language supports the Nordic Noir atmosphere in an outstanding way.

The only aspect I need to criticize is the way the killer is portrayed. He takes on the persona of a First Nations American when he kills, wearing face paint and using an ax, and it is never fully explained why. It seems like this feature was just included to give the story an "exotic" touch and to make the case more bizarre, but that is not satisfying and culture should not be used or depicted like that, even though it was written in the 1990s. show less